CTV National News reported on a COVID-19 diagnostic test that uses University of Guelph-developed DNA technology.

Prof. Steve Newmaster, a member of U of G’s Biodiversity Institute of Ontario (BIO), helped to developed the molecular diagnostic kit, which was approved by Health Canada last week.

The Hyris bCUBE can detect genetic material from the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 and determine whether someone is infected within 90 minutes with 95-per-cent accuracy.

“I call it the Easy Bake Oven because it’s a little blue silver box, you open the door and you put the cartridge in and you close it,” Newmaster told CTV News.

Researchers at U of G and worldwide have developed DNA barcoding reference resources to identify species of organisms, used in everything from authenticating foods and ingredients to conserving endangered animals.

“The whole mandate of the BIO has been to build DNA sequence libraries and develop diagnostic tests,” Newmaster told U of G News earlier this year. “The idea is to identify something quickly. Here it’s to identify a coronavirus-infected patient.”